EX-MINISTER Geoffrey Robinson said he would win Coventry North West as Labour's candidate - despite a Commons watchdog ruling that he misled Parliament over Maxwell links.

The multi-millionaire MP said he had no intention of standing down as Labour's candidate and was looking forward to searching through boxes of documents for a missing cheque which would clear his name.

Speaking from the New Statesman magazine offices in London, he said: ''I'm still standing .... let's wait for the election result.''

Coventry North West is one of Labour's safest seats. He has held it for 25 years and was re-selected last year by the constituency party.

There has been persistent speculation he may stand down at the last minute.

The pressure for him to do so mounted yesterday when the House of Commons standards and privileges committee ruled he had failed to declare a financial interest in Maxwell's Hollis Industries and misled Parliament by withholding information.

They did not go as far as Commissioner for Standards Elizabeth Filkin whose investigation found Mr Robinson or one of his companies had indeed received a #200,000 payment from Hollis which should have been declared.

Instead they gave him three months to prove neither he, nor any of the companies in which he had a direct financial interest, got the cash.

Yesterday Mr Robinson said he was keen to ''open the first box'' when a team starts to search on Tuesday through 403 boxes of documents about Hollis.

He said: ''I say very firmly we have not had the money. I have not had it. The bank records are destroyed and we're now going through the major task of looking through boxes. We'll be getting on and searching each one.'' He denied he had misled the first standards and privileges inquiry into the same allegation in 1998 by withholding information.

He said: ''They say I misled it by not disclosing information I'd forgotten all about. I was in government and they asked me questions as to whether I got a payment of #200,000 as chairman of Hollis and I answered 'no'.

''They've dug out a whole load of other information, none of which was used previously and said I should have declared it.''

The pressure today continued, with Independent MP Martin Bell warning Tony Blair the party would be damaged if Mr Robinson was allowed to stand in the election.

"I think they will be damaged if he goes forward as a candidate. Certainly the opposition parties will, quite rightly, use this as stick to beat the Government with," he said.

Mr Bell, who successfully stood against Neil Hamilton in Tatton at the last election after Labour and the Liberal Democrats withdrew their candidates, suggested the opposition parties should now try the same tactics against Mr Robinson.